Elisabeth Byre 2004

Poetic and political on our existential conditions, on Bjørg Taranger and her project City Angel

Poetic and political on our existential conditions

Bjørg Taranger`s work entitled City Angel is a bold and confrontational
project. Bold, because it focuses on significant and serious questions
concerning existence, such as compassion, life and death, without
lapsing into cliché. Confrontational in its clear and explicit
articulation. The works appeal to the public in a very direct and
insistent way – regardless of whether they are presented in Oslo
Central station, in a gallery space or on a private wall.

The project originated from a personal encounter with the Norwegian
health service. Experience, gained from when her mother was a corridor
patient at Haukeland hospital in Bergen, became the beginning of a
series of exhibitions at home and abroad, with the nurse as axis. The
subtitle is “preparing a private space”, and it was precisely this lack
of a personal, private space that was the catalyst for the idea and the
personal compulsion to highlight the problem in an artistic
context.

Taranger uses the nurse (city angel) as a symbol for the humane and the
compassionate; she claims that her utopian dream is a society where
basic human values have first priority. Historically the figure of the
nurse and female carer is eternal. From the Bible’s Maria Magdalena to
self-sacrificing figures such as Florence Nightingale and Mother
Theresa – life-essential and life-giving in their actions.

Taranger highlights contemporary institutionalised care organs like
hospitals and health personnel. In the video “Preparing A Private
Space” we see two simultaneous images. On the right hand-side we see
two nurses making up a bed. Details of bed linen being laboriously
applied by experienced hands display a ceremonious character, and
initially appear as painterly and dream-like, in substance beautiful.
The images are lingeringly slow and share few elements of the
institution or sickness. A little later, when the bed stands ready, the
camera reveals more and more of the institutionalised room.

In contrast to the poetic scenario is a plastic sheet applied to the
middle of the bed (protection against faeces and urine), a
confrontation and reminder that the space is public, it is a public bed
where hundreds of people have lain and will lie, an impersonal bed
pretending something private – a private space. The left hand-side
image presents the back of a pair of white, high-healed shoes bearing
red crosses; they run along something one comprehends as a corridor.
These impractical heels are a humoristic twist with a sharp ironic
undertone: High heals are a far cry from the reality of nurses, who
depend on sensible, foot-friendly shoes in their daily corridor race.
And the presentation of the sexy nurse is a familiar cliché. The
visuals are sparse. We see nothing other than the eternally running
shoes, with their copious crosses catching our eyes, and the image
appears urgent and stressed, insistent in its repetition.

In contrast to the action on the screen the video is a comment on the
situation of the vulnerable patient, where the patient must be treated
with respect and care, and to the demanding work situation of personnel
in hospitals and institutions today. Again this indicates society’s
negligence of the sick and needy with regard to the allocation of
resources and economic means. At the same time the work is a tribute to
carers in hospitals and institutions today.

The filming and handling of the nurses actions are reminiscent of one
of video’s virtuosos – Bill Viola. In the work “The Passing” (1991)
Viola films his mother’s deathbed in a sublime way, meticulously and
gently. Taranger has managed to create a similar solemn
atmosphere.

In the project City Angel Taranger uses video, installation, happening,
performance and still image. She lets professional nurses prepare a
sick bed in a gallery space, with public present, while she herself
documents the action on video. This documentation strengthens the
work’s rhetoric credibility, and introducing the nurse into the gallery
space further emphasises the message: This concerns us all, we are all
mortal, and we will come to need care and attention sooner or
later.

In the1960s and 70s the international Fluxus movement were initiators
of a normalisation of art. With performance and happenings the group
worked to remove boundaries between the high and the low, between the
art institution and the man in the street. They were innovative in the
fusion of different art forms, media and expression.

Taranger`s work can be seen as an advancement of a kind of anti –
elevation art project, in that she provides us with a similar
normalisation of both sickness and art. With the public present at the
exhibition opening the nurses actions are applied to aestheticism and
the gallery space is normalised to contain hospital function. For a
short while the two institutions exchange place.

On today’s art scene the Danish-Norwegian art duo Michael Elmgren and
Ingar Dragset similarly pull the hospital and institutionalised care
into the gallery with their work “Please Keep Quiet!” (2003). In this
work the gallery space is turned into a hospital ward with sick-beds,
charts and trolleys. In the beds lie patients in the form of very
life-like wax figures. “Please Keep Quiet!” is a clearly articulated
reminder of our transitory existence.

In Taranger`s work it is the absence of the patient that becomes the
strength, while the plight of the patient is absolutely present despite
the fact that the physical patient is not. The still images of the
nurses making the bed work as both supplement to the video and as
independent works. The silkscreen print’s delicate texture contrasts
the hardness of the aluminium plates, just like the softness of the bed
linen contra the sickbed’s metal frame. The theme of the work is
emphasised by the still image’s clear text, and in this way City Angel
can be seen as both a contribution to a steadily on-going health
debate, and as an existential work about our fundamental values.